SS Van Imhoff

On 18 January 1942, the ship departed from Sibolga, Dutch East Indies, bound for Ceylon. On board were the Dutch crew, soldiers from Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) and 473 German internees (crews of captured German merchant vessels and civilians with German backgrounds), some held below and some in hastily created cages on deck. At 10 a.m. on the following day the ship was attacked by a Japanese Mitsubishi G4M bomber and sustained damage towards the bow. This caused the ship immediately to begin listing towards the port side. At 1 p.m., the decision was taken to abandon ship.[1] The first lifeboat was lowered into the water, while crew and guards onboard kept the prisoners below deck. Over the next hour or so, five of the six lifeboats were lowered into the sea. As the last Dutch seamen and soldiers left the ship, the prisoners were released. The single remaining lifeboat, some bamboo life rafts and a workboat took some 200 of the internees; the remainder drowned.[2][3]

The lifeboats reached land safely. The Dutch authorities alerted merchant vessels in the area and despatched a rescue tug from Padang, with a small party of KNIL soldiers to guard any German survivors. Because of a shortage of fuel, only one Catalina patrol aircraft of the Dutch Naval Air Force at Medan was despatched. Of the internees who escaped the ship, only those in the two boats survived; all those on the liferafts died.[2]

In 1956 a Dutch judicial investigation into the incident concluded: "No reason for a criminal complaint was found.". In 2021, however, the Netherlands Institute for Military History was directed to reopen the investigation, with the result to be delivered in 2024.[4][5]